.. there’s a lot of them these days from the obscure to well known.

It has to be seriously asked and considered though, who, given their own spiritual stories, sits there and says ‘f it, upload me to YouTube I want to be on there’.

You’ve been meditating in a hut for a long time, stuck motiveless on a park bench, even realised that your actually an alien being, earth is trivial in comparison to ‘what you know’ but somehow, just somehow, YouTube is the way.

It is just so weird. Cannot believe I ever got sucked into any of it.

False guru's have always been present in life. What our world has never known is our current population density and the evolution of IT that has changed our world as far as communications and the availability of personal information. People have always quested for something higher than what we have come to know. Unfortunately, while we seek to learn/experience something new or different than what we know, we can also fall victim to those seeking to exploit.
Now, more than ever we must be discerning of or our physical, emotional, spiritual and psychic selves. Don't place yourself at risk to others in such a way that they can harm you.

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Sunflower7
People have always quested for something higher than what we have come to know.

Agreed. And we've always sought out people to be the mediators between that "something higher" and ourselves. You see this all throughout history, all over the world. Maybe it's an instinct we're born with. And/or maybe it's because to find that "something higher" we have to get (at least temporarily) beyond the delusions/psychological issues that stand in the way, that keep us down. It's tempting to listen to people talk about spiritual progress endlessly instead of actually devoting ourselves to that progress. We look at fingers pointing at the moon, as the classic metaphor goes, and instead of actually diverting our attention from the pointers to that which is pointed at, we keep focusing on the fingers. We want fingers, fingers, more fingers. YouTube provides an endless supply.

Of course, people on YouTube pointing to the moon is a best case scenario. Those are people with the best intentions, but there are also people who've never seen the moon but just learned how to describe it to make themselves look wise and to have power over people. Those are at the opposite ends of the scale, the scale ranging from wise people to con men. I don't know if anyone can be 100% on the wise people end of the scale, but I'm sure plenty of people are 100% con men.

‘Don't place yourself at risk to others in such a way that they can harm you”

Thanks Sunflower for your post, it’s true, and I especially like the bit of advice you gave quoted above.

Hehe with the 100% Zizlz con artists.

Shortly after posting, I was directed to look at authoritarianism in the guru role.. and was recommended a book which I found had been posted about on the forum here when I was Googling reviews.. here’s the thread. I’m looking forward to reading the book, which is called “the guru papers - masks of authoritarian power”.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Sorry if the link doesn’t appear, I’ve tried re-doing it.. or if interested in the thread people can use the on site search.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/2020 11:58PM by facet.